Monday, October 17, 2011

Why I support Occupy The Hood by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

Why I support Occupy The Hood

by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

The new mass movement, Occupy Wall Street, has already birthed a
number of movement of oppressed peoples of
color:Indigenous/African/Carribbean, etc. They are DeColonize OWS, the
People of Color Working Group, and Occupy the Hood. It is Occupy the
Hood, which is an actual Black working class political tendency, which
has the most promise as far as Africans in America are concerned. They
are not only trying to pressure the white majority to make a place the
for voices of Black/POC people, but also organzing an independent
tendency which can organize inour communities around issues effecting us
especially. it is that latter dimension which really excites me.
For
years, I have heard, but not seen a Black revolutionary mass movement
in the hip hop era, which is free of middle class conventional politics
or being manipuated by some power-hungry preachers/politicians. This
movement has the potential to create a genuine mass movment of the poor
and oppresssed, based in the urban inner cities. It is a youth centered
movement, but seems to understand if it raises issues of oppressed
peoples in Harlem, North Philly, South Memphis, or other hoods in other
places, they can bring a true majority together, an army of the poor.
In
order for that to happen, they have to put the people and mass
grassroots politics in command, and be based totally around popular
issues. In saying "politics", I am not talking about electoral politics,
which I considere virtually useless and weak, I am talking about
putting the Black poor together as a class, and then using their numbers
to confront the white capitalist government and its financial sector in
an anti-capitalist protest movement.
It is this what made the
Black protest movement of the 1960's so dynamic, not just a number of
small militant groups fighting isolated in various communities. Black
Power was a widespread, but decentralized mass movement which superceded
the civil rights phase, even before the assassination of Dr. M.L. King.
Groups like the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black
Workers and others had become mass movements in their own right, instead
of tailing after white radicals.

This can happen again,
and in my mind, Occupy the hood is that movement best situated to make
that hapen in this period. They are part of the Wall Street tendency,
and can unite with other POC tendencies and even
anti-racist/anti-colonial whites to wage an internal battle inside OWS
to make it accountable to POC's instead of just white middle class
workers who have lost their jobs, homes, or money in this period. We
have suffered far worse.
Over 1 million Black/POC people are in
the prison system, which destroys not just the prisoner but his family
and community. We have the highest evels of unemployment in the USA,
"officially" 16.7%, but actually far higher at Great Depression levels
of 26%. We have the highest number of urban homeless. We have record
levels of infant mortality, approaching the 3rd world. On and on we are
catching hell more than anybody, and we are the class of surplus labor
that all economists speak of who have considered the matter.

But
we need to organize, not not just bemoan our fate or curse our luck. We
can change everything with out all-out struggle, on our own terms. We
do not have to be shackeled by the racism and backwardness of white
workers. Through a movement like Occupy the Hood, we can orgnize not
only our own communities, but through that organize the world who would
unite with our struggle. So, to end this, I see the potential of this
movement more than anything else to come along in the hip hop era. They
seem to "get it", and understand instinctively that they can organize
their peoples to not only destroy Wall Street, which is based on our
slavery and exploitation, but the entire system of capitalist
oppression. Memphis has been designated the poorest city in the USA. I'm
honored to be part of this movement in anyway, and will do everything I
can to push it forward. I am not interested in "leading" it, they seem
to have already gotten founders and collective leadership that can do
the job at this early stage. I hope tht all power will continue to rest
in the local communites, and that they shut out all m anner of political
opportunists seeking to become the next Obama or politician using the
movement as a launching pad. Only if power is in the hands of the people
will it succeed.